Dear Mr Beefy ex-soldier: Your BT needs you

A land fingered by heroes

BT wants to enlist tough, muscly ex-armed forces personnel to help the telco roll out faster broadband in the UK.

As The Register has previously reported, BT engineers are currently taking up to seven hours to lay cable in BT's ongoing fibre-to-the-premises trial in Milton Keynes.

So perhaps the company needs a leg-up, so to speak, from erstwhile beefy soldiers to help get the job done.

BT's Openreach said it was looking to recruit around 200 newbie civvies "to help deliver super-fast fibre broadband".

We at Vulture Central aren't sure if this means the company currently has too many weak engineers fingering BT's delicate yet work-intensive cables.

In fact, the company has already offered 181 ex-armed forces men and women a job, having carried out 202 interviews. BT didn't reveal how many of those applicants accepted the job, but most of those who did will start working for Openreach by the end of this month.

"It's fantastic that we've been able to recruit so many ex-armed services personnel. These people have served their country well and so deserve the chance of full-time employment with a generous reward package," enthused Openreach boss Olivia Garfield.

"They are highly skilled, motivated and disciplined and have experience of complex engineering tasks in challenging environments," she added. ®